


Plain Sailing

by voices_of_salt



Series: The Riera Cycle [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Homework, No One Is Doing Their Homework, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 19:50:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9457970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voices_of_salt/pseuds/voices_of_salt
Summary: Sometimes it's hard growing up with the burden of future leadership. You have to be inside when the other kids are out enjoying the sunshine. But when young Rieras are gathered together, trouble is never far away.





	

 

  


“Cat—”

“No.”

“Seriously, Cat—”

“No, seriously, Mercè: if I ever get out of sight of land and you’re not there, I’ll just throw myself overboard as an offering to the sea. Then at least my poor crew might have a chance.”

Caterina Riera stared at her slate, where a chalk ship under her command had somehow contrived to run itself aground four miles inland on the Gueldish coast.

“Do you want to start over?” Mercedes asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to scream first?”

“Yes.”

Mercedes leant back in her perch on the sill of a library window and plugged her ears. Caterina slammed her fists on the heavy table and let out a wordless, blood-curdling screech that echoed through Villa Riera. A cat in the courtyard far below raised its head and half opened one eye, then went back to sleep.

Caterina took a deep breath, pushed her hair back from her face, and sat square to her desk. Wiping her slate clean, she looked up at her cousin, brow furrowed in determination.

Mercedes tried to keep her expression neutral. It was a cruel irony that Caterina – so proud, and with the full Vilar gift for reading every subtlety of expression –  should be so abominably ungifted in navigation. Not wanting to meet Caterina’s eyes, Mercedes raised the book before her face, attempting to hide behind it.

It was also _excruciatingly_ unfair to be trapped in the dark, stuffy tower of the Villa Riera library on a fresh spring day. And such a spring day! The scent of almond blossoms wafted in the window, and all of Lleida was green and alive with the spring rains. Yet here she was, inside, trying to help her cousin avoid adding another ship to the veritable armada Caterina had already steered to grisly ends.

“Let’s try another problem, maybe?”

Caterina nodded and picked up her chalk.

Mercedes cleared her throat. “Alright, here goes: the curtain rises, and we see a ship running at the rate of four-and-a-half miles an hour, with the wind then at East by north, blowing two points abaft the beam.” She waited a moment while Caterina diligently chalked the numbers onto her slate and drew a small ship in the middle of her slate.

“At five in the evening, being two leagues West by south of a headland, she met the tide in flood setting sou’-sou’west at one-and-a-half miles per hour.  At nine that evening she sighted a lighthouse to the nor’-nor’east-a-half-east of the headland—”

“Wait,” Caterina said, laboriously scratching an arrow before her little ship to represent the tide, and drawing a rough coastline with a tiny lighthouse. Mercedes tried not to sigh. She appreciated that Caterina needed to draw these little things out, but by the winds and waters, it added a whole new layer of tedium to the interminable process.

Mercedes did try to hide it, but she simply couldn’t wrap her head around the way Caterina seemed to struggle with these things. In her mind’s eye, Mercedes could see it all plainly: a trim little ship running steadily before the wind, sails billowing out, riding over the rising tide. It was an artificially simple picture, with all the complications of leeway, relative foulness of the hull, steadiness of wind, local currents, shoals, and the occasional sea monster temporarily suspended. This should be easy for someone as clever as Caterina to grasp. Plain sailing: plainer sailing there ne’er could be, this side of the Seas of Paradise. And yet…

“Alright, I’m ready,” Caterina said, looking up from her diagram.

“Lighthouse: nor’-nor’east-a-half-east of the headland… blah, blah, blah… right. Later, at nine that evening, the lighthouse bore east-nor’east-a-quarter-east. Tell me the ship’s course and her distance from the lighthouse.”

Caterina stared at Mercedes and bit her lip. She looked back down at her slate, chalk poised. “Well, first off, five to nine is four hours,” she said hesitantly.

Mercedes nodded. “And two points abaft the beam is ten points from the wind, which is?”

Caterina screwed her eyes shut, then opened one, squinting at her slate. “Northwest by north?”

“Right. So, since the ‘rhumb’ is the line on the same point of the compass, let’s draw our first rhumb and make the ship ‘A’. The rhumb going East by North to the headland we’ll call ‘E’. AE is near enough as makes no matter to six miles – that’s our two Isterian nautical leagues West by south of that headland. Then for Northwest by north, take AB as equal to eighteen miles, since the ship has run eighteen miles in those four hours. Now through B, draw BC parallel to the sou’-sou’west rhumb, which is equal to—”

Mercedes bit down on her tongue as Caterina held up a finger.

She _wanted_ to help, especially as Caterina suffered so miserably, and it felt cruel to make her struggle along on her own. Not to help ran counter to every instinct; it was abominable, even selfish. But, she reasoned, the price of being the heirs to Clan Riera was that they had to lead. Leadership must be lonely, in the end: no ship could have two captains.

Caterina scratched dutifully away at her slate. Not wanting to hover, Mercedes slid out of her seat on the window and circled idly round their floor of the library, running her hands over the old book covers on their dark wooden shelves. Mercedes thought that whatever ancestor of hers had designed the library hadn’t been the reading type: for herself, she would have done lighter wood and maybe a few mirrors to brighten up the place. In winter, the library was as dark as a cave, and it needed braziers year round to keep out the damp. And now that it was spring, slender logs of new green wood burned in those same braziers, sending up plumes of smoke intended to drive out any emerging insects.

Mercedes paused when she heard a muffled giggle from above, and peered up the spiral staircase of the library tower. Presuming they’d finished wiping down the upper shelves, her and Caterina’s fraternal other halves were _supposed_ to be drawing flashcards of all the major ships in the Isterian naval and merchant fleets.

On reflection, it seemed exceedingly suspicious that they been so quiet for so long.

“What’s so funny, dear cousin and brother mine?”

The sudden silence was, if anything, a more damning declaration of culpability than any response.

“What are you two doing up there?” Mercedes demanded. “I’m coming up!”

Arnau and cousin Raül stuck their heads down over the rail of the top floor, both looking impressively guilty and clearly trying not to laugh.

“No, no!” Arnau exclaimed in a strangled voice. “We’re fine. Just got to _Sentinella_.”

“ _Sentinella_ ,” Raül echoed shrilly. “We’re doing her hull now.”

“Beautiful stern.” Arnau added, staring determinedly at a space just behind Mercedes’ shoulder. “Bluff bows. Paying particular attention to her fine—her fine—” Her brother suddenly broke off and turned his face up to the roof of the library, as if praying for divine intercession.

“Her fine bot—bot—” Raül stammered, then managed in a whisper: “Bottom.” At that he shut his eyes as silent tears coursed down his face. Arnau collapsed against his cousin, hiding his face in Raül’s jacket and visibly shaking with suppressed laughter.

Mercedes snorted, but then she narrowed her eyes. Apart from their obvious truancy, both of them seemed oddly… rumpled.

Then she heard something new: two voices whispering, unseen up there on the top floor. Raül bit his fist, and Arnau let out a noise like a speared whale.

Like lighting, Mercedes sprang for the stairs. Arnau and Raül disappeared with shouts and what sounded like a full broadside’s worth of cannon cast loose on a heaving deck. Mercedes could hear shrieks – one of them certainly a girl’s voice. She bounded up the stairs, reaching the top floor in time to see a scene of utter chaos: a table tottered over, paper fluttered to the floor, books toppled one by one from a shelf, and someone’s jacket slipped inelegantly off a fallen chair. And, through the open window, she heard the sounds of laughter and shouts.

Rushing to the window, Mercedes sprang onto the massive desk in front of the window and leaned out. A length of rope had been made fast around the width of the desk in a figure-eight knot, with the ends dangling out the window. Below her, Raül and Arnau hung halfway down the tower from their two lines of rope, accompanied by – that was Angelo Torrens, surely! And no one in Lleida but Miquela Riera had such lovely, long brown hair and pink skin.

“You assholes!” Mercedes bellowed. “You were supposed to be working!”

She clambered out onto the windowsill, glaring down at them.

“Shit, she’s coming!” Raül shrieked down to the trio below him. “Climb faster!”

Mercedes kicked off her shoes and swung out onto the lines. She was fast as a spider on rope, but with their head start, it seemed the malefactors must make their escape before she could reach them.

But they hadn’t planned on Caterina.

She appeared like an avenging ghost on the roof below them, standing silently below where the tails of the rope lay coiled along with Senyorino Angelo and Senyorina Miquela’s shoes. Mercedes thought Caterina rather resembled an allegory of scholarly virtue, with her slate in her left hand and in her right – Mercedes blinked – in her right hand, Caterina held a smoking brand from the brazier. For a moment they all froze: Mercedes and the four on the rope gazing down at Caterina, and Caterina staring back at them. For a moment, silence reigned. Moved by some secret, feline sixth sense, the cat in the courtyard beneath them abandoned its sunny spot. Nothing else moved.

Then Caterina stepped forward and held the brand to the fine, dry cordage.

The ropes began to smoke.

With a shriek, Miquela – the lowest on the lines – began to climb back up, shouting for those above her to get back to the window.

Mercedes regained the window with ease, eagerly looking round the top floor for something less lethal than books to drop on those now storming her position. While the flash cards remained uncompleted, it seemed Raül and Arnau _had_ finished wiping down the shelves up here. Near the table stood a large bucket all aswim with grimy rags. A dead spider the size of her palm floated on the surface of the grey water, and she could see more arachnid corpses in the bucket’s depths.

Truly, the ancestors rewarded the virtuous.

The climbers heard a roar of “swabs aweigh!” and Raül looked up just in time to receive the first sopping rag square in the face. By the time Mercedes let fly with her last rag and upended the bucket on all and sundry, her cousin was only a few feet away. With a final insult concerning lubbers who couldn’t climb a rope even if they ate spider eggs and shat out the silk themselves, Mercedes did a quick bit of furniture rearrangement and bid a hasty retreat.

Barrelling down the stairs, she met Caterina on the second floor.

“You didn’t really set the rope on fire, did you?” Mercedes asked, panting.

“No, just smoked it a little.” Caterina grinned. “And I figured you’d find the bucket and empty it on them any way. If they thought about it for even a moment, they’d realise the water must’ve put it out.”

Mercedes shook her head. “Cos, you’re a marvel.”

Caterina gave a classic Vilar shrug: shoulders up as if to ward off praise like rainwater, while the fingers of her spread hands inclined gracefully inwards, indicating an unwilling but polite acceptance of the praise. “Well, if I can’t be good at navigation—”

A thump from the top floor reverberated down the stairwell, followed by a howl.

“I think our brothers are going to murder us,” Caterina observed.

“If the alternative is living with the image of my brother kissing Angelo Torrens – _Angelo ‘Tongue’ Torrens_ , of all people– I think I’ll accept my death with humble gratitude.”

There was a shriek and a bellow of warning followed by a tremendous crash: the kind of crash that might be made if a large quantity of furniture, precariously stacked, had been hit by a large object – say, a vain fifteen-year-old boy who had just discovered a dead spider in his much-prized curly hair.

Caterina and Mercedes began to run.

They pelted down the curving stairs of the library. Hitting the ground floor of the Villa at a flat sprint, the two girls burst into the courtyard, their sandals slapping against the tiled floor. Behind them, the voices of their pursuers echoed through the vaulted hallways. Sharing a glance, they put on another burst of speed.

“Girls!” A creaking voice snapped out, and both Mercedes and Caterina skidded to a halt.

Their grandmother might be pushing ninety, but Àgata Riera’s voice was still strong enough to be heard in a three-reef topsail gale. The grand old lady sat opposite the long courtyard pool, ensconced in her favorite chair. The many-layered folds of her black robes were pulled close about her, despite the warmth of the spring afternoon. Atop it all, an ebony and diamond mantilla held her veil in place, marking her as eldest of all the bruixes.

“Grandmother,” Caterina replied politely, giving a subtle Vilar gesture of respect with her right hand.

“Cut that Vilar fuckery out,” the old lady grumbled. “It’s bad enough I’ve your mother gesticulating at me all the time without you doing it too, you pretentious little wretch.”

Caterina beamed, perfectly aware that Àgata Riera boasted to everyone within earshot of her powerful lungs that her second son’s daughter was so well-mannered that she could pass for pure Clan Vilar. “I promise I’ll stop, honored bruixa.”

Mercedes smirked.

“Both of you: head to the wine cellar. Those imbeciles you have as soul-twins keep shakings where other people keep their brains. They’ll never look for you there.”

Caterina executed a subtle curtsey. Mercedes made a courtly leg, flailing her hands in exaggerated gestures of obeisance.

“Off with you”, the old lady cackled. “I’ll tell them you went down to the docks.”

When they had safely barricaded themselves in the wine cellar, both girls seated themselves comfortably on a few crates, with an upended wine barrel for a table. Mercedes plucked a bottle from the racks and poured them each a glass. They clinked glasses and Mercedes drank hers off, but Caterina stared thoughtfully into her wine.

“Something on your mind, Princess Cat?” Mercedes asked, putting her feet up and laying her head on Caterina’s shoulder, winding her arms around her cousin’s waist.

“I thought he was ‘Toenails’ Torrens – Alfonso, I mean. How do you know about his tongue?”

“It was a dare, embarrassingly enough.”

“You’re lying.”

Mercedes sighed. “Have I ever told you I really hate that you can do that?”

Caterina chuckled, patting Mercedes’ hair and draining her own cup. “You’re an open book, Mercedes. You _could_ try to conceal your emotions, you know.”

“And you could navigate using my ass to take lunars.”

“Touché.”


End file.
